The Amazon assigned categories of “bleak” and “downbeat” for The Lost Weekend (1945), had me hesitating before ultimately pressing ‘rent’. It’s not that I can’t watch difficult content, it’s just not always my first choice. But… I was committed to covering an Oscar winner with a runtime that falls within the The 90-Minute Movie criteria (no more than 110 minutes) and this one about an alcoholic bender caught my eye.
Don Birnam (Ray Milland) is a writer in the same way many of us are: he writes very little and drinks very much. Only for Don, the drinking has taken over his life. We meet Don several days sober as he and his brother, Wick (Phillip Terry), prepare for a weekend country trip where the hope is Don can fully dry out—while removed from the temptations of the city—and finally overcome his addiction. Prior to their departure however, Don’s girlfriend Helen St. James (Jane Wyman) disrupts them and, in a few twists of conversation, winds up taking Wick with her to a last-minute Carnegie Hall matinee. Once they depart, Don starts a bender that will last all weekend long.
Before we begin: I’m going to spend some time talking about the Hays Code in this post, so if you’re unfamiliar or want a deeper understanding feel free to click the link above and dig in. If you’re ok with my paraphrasing, well then, stay right here. The Hays Code aka the Motion Picture Production Code was a way for the industry to self-regulate rather than be held to the whims of the government. It was put into place in 1930, widely accepted by 1934, and used for just over thirty years until the MPAA rating system was put into place. The code basically took out the sex, drugs, and (possibly) rock n’ roll from movies. The full list of what was regulated is as entertaining as it is shocking.
The code is why many movies made during this time period can feel dated. While some filmmakers did what they could to push back against these regulations, undermine them, or use suggestive tools and language to get around them, many found it easier to comply. The entire plot and content (alcoholism) of The Lost Weekend was already balancing on a razor’s edge, so director Billy Wilder needed to be mindful of what he portrayed.
Something integral to the Code is that wrongdoers must be punished. You could never have movies like we have today with Glass Onion and Barbarian, where, as suggested by Alison Willmore at Vulture, our leads don’t exactly face retribution or even learn from their wrongdoings. So, Don Birnam as played by Ray Milland is over-the-top. Very BIG. A bit more cartoony than we’re used to and we lose some depth of character there. I think we’ve also become attuned to subtle performances over time.
I also found Don to be a bit unbearable with few redeeming qualities. Don states more than once that there are two Don Birnams: the writer and the drunk. But we never meet the writer, or the man Don was or can be without drink. Whatever Wick or Helen see in him, we don’t, which makes it hard to empathize. Even in the flashback of Don meeting Helen, one of the first things he does is throw an umbrella at her. That's their meet-cute! I suppose this is all to prove a point about enabling alcoholics. Helen and Wick want to trust him alone. Gloria, the call girl, lends him money even after he stands her up for a date. Nat, the bartender, continues to over serve Don even though he knows it’s ruining his life. But without knowing Don the person it is hard to care for Don the alcoholic.
I do have to commend this film however, as it must be one of the earliest references on film to alcoholism as a disease. Helen says, “He's a sick person. It's as though there was something wrong with his heart or his lungs. You wouldn't walk out on him if he had an attack. He needs our help.” The film depicts alcoholism as something serious, damaging, scary, and risky instead of simply humorous (which was more common at the time.) And for that I understand why it was so groundbreaking. In fact, according to Film Noir Foundation, “gangster Frank Costello, representing distilleries concerned about negative publicity, offered to pay $5 million to suppress the film.” It was that big a deal.
Another concession made for the Code is the removal of the homosexual undertones of the original source material— a novel by Charles Jackson. According to that same Film Noir Foundation article, Jackson never pushed back on this elimination or even mentioned it, but, as the article speculates, that’s because he was still married to a woman at the time of filming and wouldn’t come out for years later. I’ve never read the book, so I can’t say myself how detrimental this is to the overall story. But for many critics, this missing piece of Don is a huge loss as the subtext of the novel is that his alcoholism is not only driven by his inability to write successfully, but also by his inability to live openly as a gay man.
Not totally unrelated, I found it interesting that this 2013 article in Vanity Fair completely leaves this note out. Even going so far as to bring up that he lived in the Chelsea Hotel later in life, but omitting the fact that he lived there with a male partner. I don’t know if this is because they could not corroborate this information, or if they had another motive to leave this out of the story altogether.
Outside of the story, acting, and portrayal of alcoholism, The Lost Weekend is a beautifully shot film with an unnerving and captivating score by Miklos Rozsa. With the soundtrack I was reminded of sci-fi and horror films. My partner, Frank, pointed out that Rozsa used a theremin to create the spooky, eerie vibe of the entire film. The score really does a lot of work. Even when I found Milland’s acting to be a bit over the top--even sometimes humorous--the score brought me back to reality and what the stakes of the story truly were. The night scenes at the hospital where Don witnesses men going through intense withdrawals and suffering are just as scary as any horror film of the time.
I also loved Wilder’s use of circles throughout the film as a nod to the cycle of alcoholism. Things like Don talking about the merry-go-round of drinking, and the glass rings on the bar top created by his many drinks to give us a sense of time passing. Don’s often captured in shadow, a visual weight across his face, chest, hands, making him appear trapped, lost, and alone.
The film won Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor and Best Adapted Screenplay in 1946 and cemented Wilder as a sought-after Director. While I struggled to understand its successes (especially when compared to something like The Night of Hunter, which bombed) I can appreciate what ground it broke at a time when regulations made it impossible to tell difficult stories. The Lost Weekend ends on a high note (again thanks to Hays) with Don sitting down to write his novel. Of course, in the original book he’s not writing, he’s attempting to start another bender almost immediately. But, we’ll let them have that one, because as Wilder pointed out, there is “virtually limitless potential for misery while slaving away at a typewriter.”
SOURCES:
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/UsefulNotes/TheHaysCode
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lost_Weekend_(novel)
https://collider.com/the-lost-weekend-alcoholism-depiction-why-its-good/
https://filmnoirfoundation.org/noircitymag/The-Lost-Weekend.pdf